How Technology Is Helping Sales Associates Do a Better Job

Lauren Parker
·3 min read

With so much focus on getting product just right, brick-and-mortar retailers often overlook a crucial part of the fashion equation — the frontline workers who sell that product to consumers.

Well-trained, committed frontline workers are key to a retailer’s success, but that has often proven elusive. With a worker attrition rate of about 60 percent, retailers are essentially replacing more than half their staff every year. That’s a lot of churn and a lot of training of new staff.

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The fireside chat, “The SKU View: Supporting Frontlines to Deliver Retail Success” on WWD and Sourcing Journal’s business hub Retail Rx, discusses why investment in staff onboarding, training, development, communications and retention must be a top priority, and how AI and technology can make an impact.

“Retail workers want to do their best and they want to feel that they have the tools to do their job,” said Michael Appel, managing director and head of retail practice at Getzler Henrich & Associates. “And [having those tools] makes a huge difference.”

Axonify’s tool is easy for workers to understand and use, plus it’s always with them. “It’s BYOD [bring your own device], and they can do their daily training right on their phones after they clock in,” said Christine Tutssel, cofounder and chief revenue officer of Axonify. The training platform is also gamified to make it fun and easy to remember. If you just piled everyone in a training room and talked at them, she said, they’ll forget most of what they learn when they leave.

Technology and AI are also useful. They can provide content, help “personalize the delivery” of learning to ensure each worker gets what they need, and empower workers faced with consumer questions, be it language translation or looking something up with speed and precision.

Managers also need to connect with their frontline teams. An Axonify survey report found that 47 percent of associates cited “empathetic leadership” as a top driver of worker happiness and success, second only to equitable compensation. But with workforces in the tens or hundreds of thousands, and possibly spanning the globe, C-suites often need a tool to help them engage.

“Think about Dick Johnson, the former CEO of Foot Locker. When I first met him, he came up to me and said, ‘Christine, I just did my [Axonify Lace Up] training today, and this is how I did.’ And I’m thinking, ‘Why is the CEO of the company doing this?’ but it’s because he cares and wants to set an example for his people,” Tutssel said. “It shows that he’s an empathetic leader, and the engagement that Foot Locker gets with their employees daily is phenomenal.”

It all comes down to creating a culture of learning and engagement. “I’ve had several senior leaders from different retailers tell me that we have enabled them to change their culture. And some of these companies have hundreds of thousands of people,” said Tutssel, adding that if a company can get everybody going in the same direction, one employee at a time, “it can have a real impact on where the business is going.”

The SKU View is a fireside chat series on Retail Rx, a business hub for essential retail industry news, insights and perspectives. To watch this episode, CLICK HERE.]

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